Candlelight and Coffee Cake
by Phritzie
Summary: It was the atmosphere that let Leonard know he wasn't okay. It was dark, silent. The opposite of Jim Kirk. Part of the Coffee, Jim? series, but can be read alone.


**A/N:** Perhaps a bit angstier than I had originally anticipated it being, but here you have it. Thanks so much to Peachly, for taking a look at this and lending her thoughts. :)

**Disclaimer:** The Star Trek franchise belongs to Gene Roddenberry, and the 2009 film, J.J. Abrams. I make no money from this fiction.

**Warnings: **Emotionally dark and not good for those with high blood-pressure. Aimed at friendship, but can be interpreted as pre-slash. Also, unnatural shmoop.

* * *

Leonard knew something was horrible amiss the moment he walked in, the _hiss_ of an automatic door behind him far too loud in their dorm room's constrained proportions. The lights had been extinguished, making the room seem larger than normal. More mysterious and unfamiliar. It was late, nearing 0100 hours, and he had classes in the morning.

_If it weren't today..._

In his hands, he held a coffee cake and a neatly packaged gift. A shiny blue tag that displayed Jim's name contrasted meaningfully with brown matte, the wrapping paper he had used to wrap Jim's present with. It hung in the air off the side, fluttering with Leonard's halted steps.

Jim sat with a single candle lit on the desk before him, hunched over.

The air in the room was stilted. Thick. Like it hadn't been disturbed in ages. Jim had probably stayed in since Leonard left this morning to check in on medical, he reckoned, and if that really was the case...

The homage was cryptic and unhealthy. He had no idea why he was just standing there, watching as his best friend maintained a bent position- staring intently into the dancing flame of the candle. It appeared to have entranced Jim, though somehow, Leonard knew that he was the one who was holding up the show. Jim had heard him enter and was waiting for him to say or do something. Leonard finally saw the tension coiling in the concave curvature of his shoulders as the silence dragged on. Jim was starting to worry him. He didn't know how to deal with this- this new experience, something akin to trying a dangerous recreational activity for the first time, like rock-climbing without a harness.

_Without something to catch you if you slip._

Against his better judgment, Leonard took a deep breath, and it probably sounded like a scream in the silence, because Jim visibly stiffened. He let it out in a rush against his will. In an impossible animation, the candle reacted violently to the second disturbance. The flame leapt, suddenly lashing out in all directions- though Leonard knew that was just a result of disturbing the air.

_This won't do. I'm cowering at fire. _He inhaled again, more quietly, but it still felt anxious- panicked. God, he wasn't _made_ for this - _I am a __doctor_ - but he couldn't just stand there for all time. He had to do something.

He took a step forward, and then a couple more, his shoes whispering against the carpet. Leonard thought, seeing him jerk again, that if Jim hadn't cornered himself in the deepest recesses of their shared quarters, he might have made a run for it; but Leonard was going to push this, even if it hurt- and even if it bled. Because the way Jim was dealing with this was a _far cry_ from sane, and he _still had to do something._

Better now than never.

"Hey," Leonard chanced, and winced when his voice creaked, like an old hinge that needs oil. Clearing his throat, Leonard tried again. "I brought you something."

Instead of being stubborn, and ignoring him, like the weary doctor had suspected, Jim gently turned to face him. The range of emotion there was enough to cause his heart to stutter and die in his chest.

Regret, gratitude, fury, guilt, and, most of all, a bottomless well of sorrow, surging through and out of him in a simple look. Jim was no stone-faced sufferer. His pain wreathed his face in terrible tones of sharply contrasting white and black- and Leonard struggled to remind himself that a lot of that was the candle, but the worst of it- yes, the worst- was the tiny, awkward smile, upturning the corner of his lips.

"Hey Bones," he croaked.

There was no amendment. No follow up. No rumbling counter-argument to what his voice had just given away in that downtrodden break. Only himself, bare and trembling, on the inside.

Would it be like this every year, or did it get better with time? Was he capable of handling this side of Jim Kirk?

"I brought you something," Leonard repeated, and mentally berated himself, feeling dim. "It's uh.. yeah. I ain't too sure about whether you'll like it r'not, but uh.." He fumbled for something comforting to say, something generic and correct. _Damn it, McCoy, quit blubberin'_. Voice thick with his uncertainty and an accent he didn't seem to be able to banish, Leonard tried, "I got you a gift."

Jim seemed then to embody the properties of glass, spiderweb fractures drawing down over his expression and through his posture, refracting and corrupting the light of the candle. His slump worsened, and if it was even possible, he became smaller, like he was trying to shrink into himself.

"Thanks."

The sound was genuine. Hurting and sharp, like the sound a wounded animal makes, but genuine. Leonard was taken down to his knees with that sound.

"And," he said, anxious, seeking reprieve from the terrifying lapses of silence which filled their gaps in speech, "I brought you coffee cake. 'Cause I know you're caffeine addicted 'n it's what you keep me around for." The joke tore into them both- Leonard because he felt terrible for making it, and Jim because it seemed to release something within him. He stood, so abruptly that Leonard almost dropped the cake, prompting him to set it down on the small island in their kitchenette.

Not _now. _Not over_ this, _please_, not over this.  
_

The gift, simple but glaringly loud in the darkness of the room. He moved to put that on the counter too, to free his hands completely, if it was necessary. But with his arm extended toward the counter, and his eyes trained on Jim, Leonard froze, terrified.

Jim had begun to move towards him, his expression an absolute melting pot of emotions, so completely undefinable now that he _was_ a man of stone, a moving mountain, something intimidating and unstoppable. Leonard wanted to flee, but his feet were rooted to the spot, and Jim just kept moving- and it was almost glacial in how it happened, like Leonard was the land and Jim, the receding ice, except they were coming closer together, inevitable and slow.

_Please don't do this._

Then he stopped, just a breath away, and everything was distressing. Leonard couldn't remember being more scared in his entire life, barring when Jocelyn told him she was going to go to court with him for Jo, and when his dad's life, so precious and finite but paternally immortal, slipped from his grasp. There was no way he could handle another altercation with Jim. The physicality of it, the bruise he walked away with- were nothing compared to the mental state they had both been left in the last time. How would they recover? How could he possibly even _think_ of an acceptable apology?

Leonard looked, and decidedly _was,_ a complete mess. If he had the gall to admit it to himself, he might have been shaking.

Jim looked more put together than he'd ever seen him.

"Thank you for the gift, Bones," he said warmly, and took the package from Leonard, his frozen outreach towards the island nugatory. He placed it on the floor, beside him, and peered at Leonard searchingly, continuing, "and thank you for the cake, too. It looks amazing."

Jim hardly seemed to be breathing, as if Leonard was a doe in a meadow, wide-eyed and shaking, prepared to dart away at any moment.

The metaphor was more accurate than he'd have liked. To think he'd been considering the same of Jim not a few minutes earlier.

And then, everything stilled. _Oh, _no.

_God forbid anybody ever learn about this._

Jim surged forward faster than warp speed, practically tackling Leonard to the floor with the force that he threw himself towards the unsuspecting man, arms locking around his shoulders and the paralytic arms at Leonard's side in a crushing, desperate embrace.

Anticipating reciprocation.

_Waiting for me to hug him back_.

It couldn't be that easy.

Leonard let the frost in his muscles melt away, and put his arms around his best friends middle, even if it was a little awkward, a little too close. This kind of contact with Jim was foreign, entirely new. Unexpected. He was being absorbed into a being of an entirely different element, like they were anions, bonding to form an ionic compound. _Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. And, his friend. _His best friend. James Kirk. He smelled like wax, smoke, and man. Leonard's brain short-circuited, all at once at a loss for words. There was only one appropriate phrase left, anyway.

"Happy Birthday, Jim," Leonard heard himself whisper.

It seemed like hours passed before Jim pulled away, unsmiling but aglow with something happy and redeemed, and _again, _he needed to _remind__ himself_ that it had to be the candle, shining around and behind his sun-bronzed friend; like an eclipsed moon in the darkness of the room. Leonard indulged his lungs. The mood had a lightness to it now. The air was a of a gentler quality, a plausible influx and exhale of emotion.

Breathable.

Jim was going to be okay.

Everything was going to be okay.

Another hurdle had been successfully passed, and the both of them had been left, thankfully, unscathed. Though... It was a bit funny- and don't ask him why, because Leonard hardly cared why, for how _relieved_ he was, but Jim didn't even touch his present until the next morning.

That night, all he wanted was the coffee cake.


End file.
